Google Play privacy scandal has developers calling for change

Developers were as shocked as their customers to discover they are getting personal information from every everyone who purchases an Android app in the Google's Play store last week, and they are demanding the company change its policies.

The scandal broke when Dan Nolan, an Android developer based in Australia, noticed personal details on customers of his Paul Keating Insult Generator app. This included names, e-mail addresses and even the suburbs in which they live. He reacted on his blog with scathing comments about Google.

With the information I have available to me through the checkout portal I could track down and harass users who left negative reviews or refunded the app purchase. The problems on android of app permissions (and subsequent potential for malware aside) is one of active negative behaviour on the part of an app developer. This isn't. This is a massive oversight by Google. Under no circumstances should I be able to get the information of the people who are buying my apps unless they opt into it and it's made crystal clear to them that I'm getting this information. This is a massive, massive privacy issue Google. Fix it. Immediately."

Other developers quickly got involved and did their own digging.

So I investigated this further it seems around December 2012 is when Google stopped anonymising email addresses in Google Play purchases

Eric Butler, a developer based in Seattle, said collecting the information and providing them to developers isn't the key issue so much as being transparent about it. Let's give him the final word, as told on his blog:

Apple set a very high bar for privacy when they launched the App Store: Developers are given zero information about customers. When Google copied it to create the Android Market, expectations had already been set. ... Google should follow Apple's lead and offer users and developers better privacy protection."